


Tryptych One Part 3 - Keeping It In The Family

by JoansGlove



Series: Slow Dance [3]
Category: Wentworth (TV)
Genre: Domestic Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-24
Updated: 2017-03-24
Packaged: 2018-10-10 05:06:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10429785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoansGlove/pseuds/JoansGlove
Summary: When Joan's future is threatened she finds the courage to fight back





	

**Author's Note:**

> As always, dedicated to Duchess. Thanks mate x

_Years of heavy drinking had finally taken their toll and Major Kireyev was not a well man. As his body betrayed him, so his mind festered._

_He could no longer fence, gone was his agility, his stamina, his sureness. His reputation as a fearsome opponent was something people soon forgot._

_Instead, he coached Joan. He had taken it into his head that she was gold medal material and had taken early retirement to spend his time in the studio with his daughter. He would have liked her to have competed in the last Olympic Games, to have seen a little of her homeland, but she wasn’t up to scratch back then; now, however, he was sure that she could make it to Seoul if only she applied herself. He had decided that University would be too much of a distraction for her, she needed all her time to study technique and tactics if she were to win. As usual, his daughter did as she was told._

_Joan tried her best to win because it pleased her father. It pleased her too. But as she honed her performance she found that her talent wasn’t enough to carry her through as it had so often in lower level competition, and she began to apply herself with determination to learning her opponents’ body language, memorising their habits and favoured cadences, their flaws, and patterns of prises de fers._

_Joan absorbed all that she learnt, pushing her mind almost as much as her body in the quest for victory. Once, losing to a well-matched opponent was nothing more than a disappointment but now, each defeat rankled, the intoxication of her hard-won success evaporating to leave her feeling deflated and vowing to do better next time._

_That he was finally focusing his energies on her felt wonderful but, sometimes, it was hard to keep her anger in check as her father barked instruction at her from the side lines, belittling her not inconsiderable ability until her concentration broke and her opponent forced an error. Yet her wins mounted until she was approached by a scout from the Australian National Fencing Team._

_Her father had been elated and for the first time he seemed truly proud of his daughter, she was on her way to glory and it was all because of him! Only official team members were eligible for the Olympic Games! But his good humour was short lived. In order to join the team, Joan would be required to live in Canberra where she would be coached by the best in the sport. Ivan’s input would no longer be necessary._

_He managed to keep his emotions in check until they got home and then he exploded._

_He was beside himself with indignation. How dare they?! he raged, how dare they ignore his expertise like this? But it was more than that – he knew that if Joan left him now, if she was allowed to develop her confidence, he knew that she would never come back to him. He simply could not allow for that to happen. He coldly informed Joan that naturally, she would not be accepting the invitation._

_But Joan had other ideas. Wasn’t this what he wanted? she demanded, wasn’t it what all their hard work was for? She’d sacrificed her education to reach this point and now she couldn’t progress because he wasn’t allowed to coach her any longer? She would be trained by ex-champions; didn’t he want that for her? She could be the best, and it would be because of his belief in her! Because of what he’d done for her!_

_He’d threatened her then. “If you choose to go, Joan, I will break every bone in your hand. You will never be able to grip a sword again.” Joan stared hard at her father and her breathing slowed as the pieces clicked into place. A white hot fury filled her soul as she realised that this was never about her excelling in her field. It was all about her father exerting his influence over her life, over her future. She couldn’t live like this – it wasn’t a life._

_Her face hardened and for the first time ever she actively defied him. “In that case, Dad, you’d better act quickly because I’m going.” She sidestepped his anticipated lunge and shoved him hard as he stumbled past her._

_The giant of a man crashed into the front door and lay, momentarily stunned, as Joan darted down the hallway towards the only other exit. “You bitch!” he roared after her. She fled into the kitchen and grabbed the carving knife from the block as she sprinted towards the back door._

_“Joaaan! Come here, you ungrateful bitch!” Kireyev swung through the kitchen doorway. The blade clattered against the screen door as Joan frantically tried to unlock it with trembling fingers. The Major looked murderously at his daughter and launched himself across the room. But he never made it. Deep in his brain something popped and he sprawled face first onto the spotless lino, his outstretched hand mere inches from Joan's foot._

_With a grating creak, the screen door popped open and Joan fell breathlessly into the bright, sunlit afternoon. She’d backed away from the house, torn between helping her father and not trusting him. He wasn’t moving but that didn’t mean he couldn’t if he wanted to. Her fear won out and, throwing the knife into a flower bed, she’d run to the neighbour’s house and begged them to check on her dad._

_She’d found that tears had come easily to her as he was stretchered into the ambulance. Anger, fear, guilt, relief, remorse, worry and apprehension - it had all come flooding out as she replayed the day’s events in her mind and numbly wondered if he would live._

_The young doctor held her hand sympathetically as she told her that her father had suffered a stroke. It could have happened at any time, she told her, it was just lucky that he’d had someone around to raise the alarm for it could have been a lot worse. He would get better, the doctor said gently, and if he responded to physio then he should be up and semi-mobile in a few months._

_Everyone assumed that Joan would nurse her father back to health. She wrestled with the prospect of leaving for Canberra, of abandoning her father to the tender mercies of a local nursing home whilst she did what she was good at, but even with the memory of all he’d done to her over the years scraping away at her she found that she couldn’t bring herself to dial the NAFT agent’s number. It didn’t matter how they had reached this point, but they had, and now it was her duty to look after him – it was what you did for family she knew, it was the right thing to do._

_But the stroke seemed to have choked every ounce of love for his daughter from the Major. Nothing she said was right, nothing she did was right. She was the cause of this misery he told her, his accusing words distorted by his sluggish tongue. She wouldn’t let him drink! She wouldn’t let him smoke. He was humiliated every time he need to piss or shit. Was she proud of herself?_

_As his faculties recovered his dissatisfaction with Joan grew ever more vocal. He mocked her weakness for staying; a true winner would have put the small matter of nearly killing their parent aside and gone on to achieve success he taunted. He knew just how to milk Joan's emotions and derived immense pleasure from the look of pain he could generate in her eyes. He criticised everything about her, from her appearance to her house keeping skills, from her lack of character to her ability as a fencer; nothing escaped his acid tongue._

_But that pain hid a dark pool of burning resentment which, fuelled by his viciousness, grew ever deeper, ever blacker. At times, the anger inside would build until she physically contorted with rage, writhing in the agony of hatred and despair. She’d even gone as far as filling a small bag with clothes, determined to quit his house, to take his car and just drive but she found that she couldn’t bring herself to carry the case over the threshold – her chest had filled with a crushing heaviness and she’d found her eyes wet with tears – she couldn’t leave her father, she loved him, he was sick, he would get better – he_ had _to…._

_She desperately needed respite from his constant sniping but each time she’d asked Brian to come home for a few days and help out he flatly refused. He was too busy, he’d said, anyway, it was her fault Dad was paralysed so she could fix her own mistake and leave him out of it. If Joan could have, she’d have finally slapped him off his feet for being such a spoilt, self-centred, obnoxious toad of a human being._

_In time, and with the aid of a stick, her father became mobile again, the burden of care had lessened but life wasn’t any easier for Joan. Almost every afternoon a taxi would arrive to take him to the Legion or the local pub and, when he rolled home at closing time, he would insist that she stay up and watch war films and espionage movies with him. A couple of times she’d tried to leave before the end and had found her exit blocked by his cane, a combative gleam brightening his dulled eyes, and had capitulated._

_Always, those films incited a drunken rant – a lecture on military tactics, the nature of honour and bravery, the weaknesses of humanity and its surprising resilience – anything he’d decided the movie had failed to address adequately, but always finding a way to denigrate his daughter._

_On Sundays, though, he would stay at home and steadily work his way through a bottle of vodka, doubling his medication to counteract its effects. On Sundays he made Joan watch the lurid late night thrillers with him, forcing her to sit through his drunken critiques and, sometimes, stories from his days in the Russian military – his beloved NKVD unit. Those stories would scare Joan. In those tales, she discovered just what a dangerous man her father had been, for whilst he boasted of his successes in breaking men’s bodies and minds, his descriptions of how he had done it were clinically cold, his explanations why almost formulaic in their aim and execution._

_She had once entertained a fanciful idea that she and her father could use his convalescence to rebuild their relationship and try to be like a normal father and daughter should be. She’d come to realise that neither of them were normal enough to do that yet it still wasn’t enough for her to break her ties with him._

 

*******

 

The hired killer had tracked his quarry through the snow and was now ordering her to strip naked at gunpoint. As the camera panned down to the woman’s bare breasts Joan's clit pulsed and she felt a flush of desire race through her. Major Kireyev shook another handful of pills from the bottle and washed them down with vodka. He smiled as the assassin holstered his gun and proceeded to strangle his hapless victim, leaving her pale body lying crumpled in the snow like nothing more than a discarded chip wrapper.

 

“I found out where she was,” Kireyev announced abruptly, “she should have known that I’d find her.” Joan glanced at her father without much interest. All day, as she had cleaned and ordered the house to his exacting specifications, he had followed her around finding fault. She was sick of hearing his voice and she could do without another one of his Mother Russia stories tonight. “I told her that I would make her pay,” he continued.

“Who? What for?” she asked tiredly.

“She was so scared. And I tell you, she had good reason to be!” His lips curled into a crooked sneer as he revelled in his memories. “She cried like a baby, she offered me anything, everything, but I told her - I told her straight - I said to her ‘you're worthless, you're nothing – you know that, don’t you?’ I told her ‘you don’t count – your sort never have. You're pointless’ and then I told her how no-one would ever miss her. I was doing her a favour really.” He turned his head and inspected his daughter’s face. The resemblance was uncanny.

 

“She said she’d come back to me and be a proper wife if only I’d let her. She’d do everything I said, she told me.” Joan stared at him in confusion. What was he saying?  Ivan’s mocking tone changed. “But, of course she was lying,” he said cruelly, “she couldn’t help herself. And then I placed my hands around her throat. What did I want with a filthy pervert for a wife?”

 

Wife? Skin tingling as the blood drained from her face, Joan's mouth fell open in stunned comprehension. He was talking about her mother! But he’d told her that her mother had died from a brain tumour not long after she’d left them…. She tried to order her features, nostrils flaring and lips trembling as she supressed her tears. Why was he telling her this now?

 

Ivan grinned evilly. “I could see that for a second she didn’t think that I was going to do it. And do you know what? She didn’t even put up a fight. She let me!  Pob tvoyu mat!” he exclaimed in Russian “She fucking let me! They never think it will happen to them, they think that something will save them – they think that you don’t really mean to do it, but it didn’t take her long to know that I did. I’ll never forget the way the hope left her eyes.”

 

She was openly crying. Tears blurred her vision as she stared incredulously at the old man in his chair. “You killed my mother?” she asked in a small, wavering voice.

“I did the world a favour”

“Why?” she moaned, “why did you do it?”

Ivan leaned forwards and pointed a trembling finger at Joan. “A wife’s place is with her husband, not running around with perverts. For better or worse, she was _my_ wife and she brought shame on my family, on my name!” Her father flopped back in his seat as if suddenly exhausted. He took a long swallow of vodka and sighed heavily. “What are you crying for, Joan? She didn’t love any of us, don’t waste your tears on a worthless whore.” The Major lapsed into silence as his attention was drawn once more to the film.

 

Joan watched him drowse in the flickering blue light of the TV. A feeling of certainty crept over her and she knew that she had to get away from him. He was poison. A few minutes later Ivan muttered the statement that chilled her to the bone. “But you won’t leave me, will you. Zhanna.” He would kill her too, she realised with sick dread. She would never escape him!

 

Patiently, Joan waited until the drugs had taken full effect then she hauled his semi-conscious body out of the chair and let him collapse bonelessly face first into the fire place. Positioning his neck over the sturdy brass fender she stretched out the rest of him as his limbs twitched feebly.

Joan crouched over him. “You miserable bastard!” she hissed, consumed by a fiery righteousness. He had hurt so many people in his life and she was going to put an end to it, right now. “You murdered her! You thought you owned her and you killed her because she showed you that you didn’t. You think that you own me too, but you don’t.”

The Major’s eyes fluttered and he tried to say something. Joan took a cushion from the chair and pressed it down on the back of his neck, gently forcing his throat against the cold metal. The over-medicated man beneath her had no strength to resist and she maintained the measured pressure as his breathing slowed, then stopped.

 

Sitting in her father’s chair, smoking one of his cigarettes, Joan smiled shakily to herself. She knew that she should be feeling something more right now but all that filled her mind was numb relief. She rehearsed what she would tell everybody as the bastard in front of her cooled.

She’d been in her room reading she told the Police tearfully. She hadn’t heard him fall because the TV was always so loud. She’d gone in the check on him when the film had finished and had found him lying there. She couldn’t believe that he was dead, what would she do without him?


End file.
